About 2 months ago (JESUS, has it really been that long already??? wow), Amy and I decided to finally visit the southeastern coast of Korea, which is supposedly quite beautiful but (there's always a catch) has pretty much nothing in the way of cities, people and general civilization. Normally I like all these things, however in Korea, where I have no car, no civilization means no public transport, making navigation very, very difficult. Then there's all the staring and unwanted attention. Not too many foreign folks get down that way (see above) so we are quite the big deal. To avoid all these hassles and spend as much time as possible seeing the stuff we want (aka nature) and as little time as possible on the stuff we don't want (aka everything else), we joined a bus tour that would be flying all over the area. Plus, we would be able to meet new people on the tour. Well, alright, I wouldn't be, cuz I'm me, but at least Amy would make some new friends.
To get around the area and manage to get back to Seoul at a respectable hour on Sunday, the tour opted to leave late Friday night and drive into Saturday morning. Ohhh, and we were trying to catch the sunrise at a temple on the southern coast (spoiler: we didn't). To make it for sunrise the bus left from Seoul at 10pm, with Amy, our new friend James, and myself on board. A word on our new friend James: he has too much energy. He's one of those people that is always peppy, always cheery, always energetic. Over long periods of exposure, unless you are just as peppy as them or high on uppers or something, these type tend to wear on a person. And he did.
Since I knew we would be arriving at our destination by 5am or something, with minimal rest time after that, I wanted to get some rest on the bus. Too bad that that night was the second game for the US at the World Cup. So much for sleeping. This game just so happened to be the controversial Slovenia game. I could complain for days about all the shit that went on in that match, but for your sake I'll keep it brief. The US was terrible in the first half. They were wonderful in the second half. That disallowed goal was the biggest load of BS I've ever seen. That official was absolutely awful. The end. As you might imagine, I was rather wound up from the drama of the match, so there goes sleeping on the bus.
At some ungodly early hour we arrived at our destination along the southeast coast of Korea. Here we were faced with several options: 1) Remain on the bus and sleep until we head out in a few hours to our next destination 2) Hike up to the top of a nearby mountain, see the sunrise and hang out at the Buddhist Temple 3) Pay a little extra and crash for several hours in a little hostel room. I had paid for the hostel room, since I hate sleeping on buses, but I had to get my shots of the sunrise first.
So I set off to find the temple. Our directions were to follow the road up the hill to the temple, which sounds easy enough. It's a mountain for gods sake, you can't really miss it. However, finding the proper path up to the the temple was a bit more tricky and after several misfires, I finally managed to arrive at the temple. Freaking awesome sunrise here I come.
Damn you fog! Damn you to hell! Yes, the fog managed to muck up yet another lovely photo-op. No sunrise for me, try again next time. But you gotta make the most of whats available. I was still in a really cool temple on the side of a mountain (see video below) and the teeny tiny town below us was close enough to avoid the fog for the most part.
The best part of the temple? In order to reach the highest shrine, they had cut out (dug out?) of the mountain, leaving a really sweet tunnel. Just like the Batcave. At least in mind it was. At least in my mind.
After some futile cursing and praying for the fog to lift, I gave up on that endeavor and instead headed around the backside of the mountain to find the trail to the mountain's peak.
Man, fuck you fog. Obviously I wasn't gonna be able to see shit, but I did get some exercise out of the whole hike and I got to nap/relax on the absolute top of the mountain with some of the other tour folks. And I can't/don't get to do that every day, so minor win for me.
From there I headed back down the mountain to explore the bustling city nestled at the base of the hill. I visited some world class museums. I chatted global politics at the local Starbucks. I saw a beautiful rendition of "Oklahoma" at the local theater.
Okay, so maybe I didn't do any of those things in this particular "town", if you can call it that. But I did get stared at by the 7 or 8 residents, so that counts for something. Once down at the bottom, I found the hostel/room thingy the rest of the group was sleeping in and went to sleep for several hours. Or at least tried to. It's really hard to actually sleep on the hard floor. Don't know how the Koreans can do it.
With my nap finished, it was time to move on to Yeosu, a city on the coast, for a harbor tour. Yeosu is hosting the 2012 World Expo and they are wholly unqualified to host such an event. How do I know? Besides the fact that a town of 300,000 will be hosting an estimated 8 million guests and that its in the middle of nowhere and not easily reached from Seoul/Incheon International Airport/civilization? Probably the fact that the former mayor (from 2006 to early 2010) was on the run for 58 days after an arrest warrant was issued on the charges of taking bribes from contractors for construction rights and what not. Yup, politics K-style. Anyways, the city was pretty nice though.
Once in Yeosu, it was off to the harbor for a boat tour around the city and various surrounding uninhabited islands. Sounds cool. In theory. Well, for the most part it was. The weather was great. The view was lovely. The boat ride had water and green nature, which is plenty enough for me.
The catch? We were sharing this particular cruise with quite a few of the local elderly. I guess we didn't get the memo that this cruise was going to be a booze cruise. But drunken, way too friendly and super creepy old men is pretty standard fare here. The folks needed to be entertained while they drank. Obviously walking up on deck and actually looking at the lovely view was out of the question. Fuck that boring shit. Instead they got a musician who of course plays the music that people of that age seem to like....TROT. I shall not provide a link to such trash on my site because well, its awful. You have the internet, so you maybe search at your own risk. The best way to describe it is that you have one individual singer whose vocal delivery can be referred to as "warbling" (cuz they really wander all over the place with their singing), over a simplistic and very cheesy electronic piano beat that would probably be passed over for a porno soundtrack. To say that it sounds like farm animals giving birth is an insult to the the beauty of birth.
We really couldn't avoid the music, despite being up on deck, as they had it cranked up so bad. Many of tour members seriously considered throwing themselves overboard (myself included). In time the music shifted and we could definitely discern that this was all coming from a stereo, that someone was actually playing this stuff. That and I could have sworn I heard a saxophone, drum and harmonica. Now I was intrigued. Sure enough, at the center of the storm was this amazing performer.
No idea why he felt the need to dress up like a clown and wear the fake detective glasses with mustache but whatever. In spite of the poor music choice, the guy could play. He definitely had some talent on the sax and harmonica all while having to keep beat with that monstrous drum on his back. Sadly, his talents were wasted on the particular music.
Back in the harbor, still moving in a daze from the "music" and sensory overload while on the boat, we boarded our bus again and headed off to the Suncheon Bay Ecological Park. Yes, surprisingly in this case they are actually conserving the nature instead of rolling right over it. Kudos. Anyways, this particular bay features quite a bit of boardwalk that snakes through the marshes allowing the guests up close and personal exposure to the locals, like this guy:
And this guy:
Those fellas really were everywhere. You couldn't find a patch of marsh without 10 or so of each of those buggers. So we wandered through, taking pictures of the scenery and generally enjoying the fact that there wasn't a million cars around, or a million people or a million of anything. Very nice.
We wanted to catch the sunset at the Ecological Park, but as you might have guessed, the fog impeded us. So we headed early to our lodging for the evening. We were fortunate enough to stay in a recreation of an old timey village, which is great expect for the sleeping on the floor thing. Although, their mattresses suck too, so you are just universally fucked for sleep.
After dinner, some of us decided to head off reservation and wander into town for alcohol (or I should say more alcohol, as most of the travelers drank with their dinner too). We quickly found a convenience store and a space to plop our asses down and commenced with the merriment. While drinking we got to hear some crazy stories. Like the one girl who got charged by a silverback while studying in Africa, among other animal stories. Or the guy who saw a monkey masturbate using a frog in a zoo, then toss the traumatized frog away when he finished. Or the couple who used to work at Disneyland. Those were some stories. Watching Baloo and King Louie of the Jungle Book fight it out back stage after a performance. Or how an old Giraffe got struck by lightning in the safari while visitors were going through. And the stench that followed. Or how they had to cut him up with a chainsaw to move the body. All super good stories. I ended up giving a capoeira demo that was too bad given how fatigued and alcohol-adled I was. Didn't even fall on my face once. At the early hour of 3am, we finally called it a night and headed to bed.
After sleeping in and missing the trip to some famous tea fields in the area (ehhh, no big deal), it was time to move to a smaller tea plantation for tea picking and tea making. At this point in the trip I was very grumpy and not all together cooperative (see shitty sleeping conditions rants 1-1,000,0000,000,000), so I wasn't super enthused about making tea. First, we had to pick our tea and were ranked on who picked the most and best tea leaves. I wandered away from my partner during the picking and instead just relaxed in the fields with the plantation's famous tea-leaf eating dog.
We walked. We ate. We shat. We had our bellies scratched. From there, we went inside for tea drinking and eventually tea leaf cooking. Again, I just wanted to wander around outside with the dog and the cats (they had those too). Lucky bastards just got to sleep and relax on the deck while I had to sit inside listening to a speech about how their tea was so awesome cuz they sprinkle them with gold dust. I don't know if the dust makes the tea better, but it sure makes it more expensive. 1,200 dollars for a package of tea? No thanks. We cooked the leaves, we flipped the leaves, we pressed and rolled the moisture out of the leaves. Personally, I just like drinking the stuff. Could care less about the prep. But it was educational.
For here we were super time crunched, so we rushed to a local bamboo forest, took some pics and left. Seriously. We were in and out in 25 minutes. No foreplay either. Cuz that's how we roll?
Our last stop, just as rushed as the bamboo forest, was a road lined with sequoias. Nothing miraculous in itself, but the trees were all planted by the Park Chung Hee regime, a military dictatorship that ruled Korea quite brutally for several years in the 70s, I believe, but also helped industrialize and build up the country. So its more famous as a historical spot than anything. But it still was pretty. Too bad I only got one pic before my battery on the camera died.
That's it. Trip over. I'll toss a few of the videos down below, but if you are really inclined to see them all then just head over to youtube and type in "talldudeinasmallwld" and search for what you like.
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